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Friday, August 10, 2012

There Is Only One Boat, There Can Be Only One Captain

A couple of recent posts and a private letter from a reader
have led me to bring up something fundamental for those on the Red Pill. It involves the masculine use of Power and
Authority, the power to Order. And it
involves the Captain/First Officer metaphor, extended.

You see, regardless of whether you’re a young man just
thinking about a LTR, or someone older who
is considering marrying a woman with a pre-existing family, or you’re just
contemplating your own socio-familial role in your household, the same
fundamental Red Pill truths apply:

We live in a complex, sophisticated, and
not-terribly-efficient social landscape at the moment, where everything from
economics to ecology is changing and amending the established social
rules. Culturally speaking, we’re in a
middle of a storm. That’s not going to
change any time soon – the pace of technological change alone is going to
continue to screw with us for at least another half-century. Every new nuance in technology – say, the
cell phone, and then the smart phone – is going to have big, wide-ranging effects
on how we live our lives, how we make our money, how we educate our children,
and how we entertain ourselves.

I’m not here to save society and quell the tempest, I’m here to help you get
through the storm. And one of the most
important things as a Man that you can do is Be The Captain Of Your Own
Boat.

That means that you accept
responsibility for authority over (if you’re single) your own life and (if you’re
married or have kids or both) the responsibility for authority over your
family. Not because God said so
(although if that helps you justify it, Amen!), or because you’re an atavistic
chauvinist who hates women and wants to dominate them, but because being the
Captain of your own Boat is your best way to navigate through this storm.

That applies to Wife Selection especially, regardless of
whether it’s your first marriage or your third.
If you’re considering matrimony, then the Red Pill approach is to offer
the First Officer position to the woman.
Not Co-Captain, but FO. You’re
Captain. If she cannot accept that, then she's not a viable FO candidate. And be certain to explain to her that there
is only one Boat. If she has her own
Boat, then she doesn’t need you and your Boat. And you aren’t signing on to be the Captain
of someone else’s Boat.

A lot is being made of the female capacity to make money in
the current economy – Liza Mundy just can’t shut up about it in her new book,
The Richer Sex. But while Mundy is
correct that women are doing quite well for themselves financially, she’s
downplaying the social and personal costs of this, or even billing it as a
feature. Nor is she really exploring the
costs to men, or the long-term effects of this phenomenon. She sees “women as breadwinner” as a
positive, feminist development and seems smug that men will just have to sit
back and deal with women wielding that kind of economic power.

Indeed, as it says on her website:

Mundy dispels the popular notion that men enjoy sex more than women do and contends that both men and women will have better sex in the coming years. According to her research, “Women’s sexual energy and self-confidence have been unleashed along with women’s earning power.” Self-supporting women, she notes, “are using their resources to have more sex and better sex” before settling down with (or settling for) a long-term partner. Mundy also argues that the laws of attraction will shift as women begin to embrace their career accomplishments as sexual assets and as men discover the sexual attractiveness of high-achieving women.

That's utter bullshit, of course -- her whole book was written by her Rationalization Hamster. The laws of attractions are damn well NOT going to shift -- men don't get boners over high-achieving women. Women get boners over high-achieving men.Men get boners over a perky pair of tits and a warm and loving attitude. What Mundy isn't mentioning is that the vaunted "sexual energy and self-confidence" is leading to more sex for women because their "earning power" has (for the most part) kept most self-respecting men away from a LTR with them.

That is, you can view the sexuality of the mid-level corporate woman as a success, because she's having more sex with more dudes . . . or you can view it as a failure, because their lifestyles and financial success have self-eliminated all the high-quality mates from consideration. The whole business about "settling down with (or settling for) a long-term partner" is pure sour grapes. Ask most women in Mundy's demographic if they are happy with their single status, and after you cut through the jungle of rationalizations you see that they'd likely trade half their annual income for a happy, fulfilling relationship with a loving, trustworthy man in a heartbeat. Hell, a significant portion of them would go back and do the Mommy Track, if they had it to do over again.

One of the Red Pill truths that Mundy is unwilling to face is
that the only Blue Pill relationships that can flourish with a female Captain are those with men who are comfortable in their low-sex Betatude – or, if they aren't satisfied being the family butler,
men whose self-respect and unhappiness will eventually drive them to be ex-husbands.

The feminist ideal has always equated money with power, and thus equated
a greater earning potential and personal income with power issues within a
relationship. Of course, back in the
Patriarchy, they railed against the unfair use of that power in marriages –
just because Dad made most of the money, why did he decide how it was spent? Now that the tables have turned, so has the
ideology: I made this money, and therefore I get to decide how it is
spent. Oh, and probably most of your
money, too.

But here’s the thing about money and power. Money can be power in a relationship. Sex can be power in a relationship. But while money and sex can exert a lot of
influence – power – in the marriage, in the end Power comes from the
willingness to stand up, take responsibility for authority, and exercise that
authority with accountability. And that begins with you, not your wife. Running the MAP, taking control of your own career, taking control of the household demonstrate your fitness for command. Passively allowing your wife to make the decisions under the illusion that it was a consensus decision is not only intellectually dishonest, it gives dangerous precedent to her eventually saying "We decided that we were growing apart and that we weren't happy together,"when, in fact, she decided the more Alpha dude with the bigger dick was a better mate -- a better Captain -- than you.

In other words, if you aren't Captain of your own Boat, then you’re just a deckhand on someone else’s.

It doesn’t matter if she makes more money than you – it just
matters that you make enough money to keep your Boat floating on your own. The employment criteria is far more important
to women than to men – but if your potential wife makes more money than you, or
your current wife makes more money than you, then being intimidated by that in
any way is a threat to your Captaincy. Security
is a turn-on for women – I get that. But
so is confident leadership, accountability, and a well-ordered Boat.

Mrs. Ironwood makes more than me (in years past, she’s made
over double what I make, thanks to our various career paths) but I don’t let
that get in the way of my Captaincy. As
Captain, I don’t think of money as power, I think of it as resources – and all
resources are devoted to keeping the Boat trim.
I know my attractiveness to my wife is not based on the Income portion
of my Sex Rank . . . but when money has been an issue, and I’ve taken on the
responsibility of making up the deficit somehow, my willingness and ability to
do so has been far more attractive to her than just having fistfuls of cash.

If your wife makes more than you, you aren’t going to be
able to impress her with your money. You
must impress her with your Captaincy, and you’d better be damn impressive. If your wife makes more than you, then she
has to agree that she’s still FO and she’s still on your Boat, even if she’s
bringing in the majority of the resources.
It’s perfectly appropriate to praise and support her first-class
contribution to the welfare of the crew, but that doesn’t give you the right to
abrogate your responsibilities as Captain – nor will she love you more for
doing so.

Similarly, if you are considering stepping into the role of
father-and-husband of a step-family, then establishing your Captaincy

is vital –
otherwise, Deckhand. And in this
situation, those

rules need to be firmly established up front and graven in
stone, with both wife and her (and/or your) children, or you’re better off
paddling away in a dinghy you command than accept the alternative.

In some cases, residual problems from the previous relationship will manifest in your new step-family, as your wife will want you to step up the discipline of children who do not see you as an authority figure. If they are old enough to understand, then they need to know you're Captain of the household, regardless of what their bioDad has to say, and if they aren't willing to respect that then there is a Problem. And that Problem better be sorted out before you walk down the aisle, or things get orders of magnitude more complicated, quickly.

Establishing your Captaincy isn’t easy, either. Especially if you don’t fully command your
Boat on your own yet. Convincing another
adult to accept your authority and respect your commands voluntarily is going
to depend heavily on your ability to impress them with your competency, and if you’re living in a
van and working part-time as a dishwasher, that’s going to be difficult. In a lot of ways, the MAP
is Command Training. And you have to be
able to command yourself before you can legitimately expect others to follow
you.

It’s especially difficult to establish this with a woman who
has invested a lot of time, money, and energy into a career. She’s used to struggling with power and
authority, and she’s going to be hard-pressed to voluntarily lay the attitudes
that have made her successful in the corporate world aside. But she must.
If your wife can’t drop her corporate authority and responsibility at
the door, then there are going to be Problems.
And there will be.

And this is where it gets particularly difficult: feminism
has told women for 40 years that they can dominate at the workplace and at home
. . . and left a trail of broken homes and twisted, bitter people behind
them. I’m very proud of my wife’s career
accomplishments, and support her utterly.
But her position and authority at work – nor her paycheck – do not give
her authority at home beyond what we’ve laid out. Work and homelife are two different spheres,
and while I’m happy to be proud of her accomplishments in her career, if they
are made at the expense of her family, then that’s a Problem for the Boat.

Similarly, if there’s step-children and possible ex-husbands/boyfriends
involved, no sane man should consider a LTR
unless his authority is firmly established as part of the deal – and for kids
who are unused to your authority (or even your mannerisms) that’s going to be
especially hard. But not
impossible. A colleague of mine left his
horrible marriage a few years ago and then met a lovely lady with two wonderful
girls in the middle of a nasty divorce to an abusive asshole. Things worked out – but only because he established his
authority as Captain with the girls and his wife from the beginning. They got on his Boat, he didn't get on
theirs.

And for a young man, considering a LTR
with any young woman, consider that you need to make sure you can Captain your
own Boat before you invite her aboard.

Now, just what does that mean? It isn’t just saying “What I say goes!” and
throwing your weight around – being the Captain isn’t a power-trip. Being the Captain is being responsible for
the health, safety, welfare, and future of everyone on your Boat. That means Ordering your Boat so that the
bills get paid on time, that there is adequate transportation and health care, that there are
adequate resources allotted to those who need them, that any holes in the Boat
get patched quickly and efficiently. And Problems get handled.

In some of these you may have to delegate to your FO, but it
is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY that the job get done, regardless of how good or poor
your FO is. It’s not about blame, it’s
not about who was supposed to do what and didn’t, it’s about the fact that
regardless of the excuses, it’s YOUR RESPONSIBILITY as Captain that it get
done. And if you aren’t willing to
accept that responsibility, then you cannot expect anyone else to accept your
authority.

That’s a big deal – and not an easy task for two generations
of men trained to avoid responsibility and authority or risk being branded a chauvinist. Two generations with distant or absent
fathers, who themselves were a mite confused on the subject of
paternal/husbandly authority.

And it’s even harder to try to establish your Captaincy in
mid-cruise, in a marriage where it hasn’t been established since the
beginning. If you’re running the MAP
and your wife is giving you some resistance, that’s only natural, and to be
expected. She’s not used to your
Captaincy, and until she sees some tangible signs of your positive leadership,
no matter what flies out of her mouth she’s going to subconsciously reserve
judgment until she’s convinced. She’s
going to resist, she’s going to drag her heels, she’s going to challenge your
fitness for duty every step, possibly . . . until you do convince her.

Once she’s convinced you’re the Captain, however, and she
gets behind you in the Boat, then there’s nowhere you can’t go.

5 comments:

I enjoy your writings, but I'm not convinced that two competent people can't be co-captains of their family "boat." I've observed marriages where that seems to be the case (the husband does not in any way appear to be a "deckhand"), and I also see it in professional spheres, where two people are equally responsible for making sure that the work gets done properly. I've also observed successful small businesses that are run by two equal co-owners. So why not a marriage, if both spouses are smart and competent?

I have no doubt that you have observed marriages where it has appeared that there is no captain. Some couples are very good at hiding who, precisely, is in charge of the relationship and the family for fear of public perception (this is usually prompted by the woman, who loses points in the Matrix if there is any type of scandalous behavior . . . such as, in some circles, openly deferring to her husband. I've known marriages like that which seemed almost perfect on the surface . . . but collapsed because of behind-the-scenes issues. For example, one friend of mind and his perfect marriage imploded after two kids and seven "happy" years. No one saw it coming, because it seemed like such a perfect, equitable match. But in the aftermath it was clear that the power struggle about sex and money and kids and such -- issues that suffer without a good Captain/FO -- were too much for their public persona to take.

Some Captain/FO relationships run so smoothly and politely that it is extremely difficult to establish just which is which -- but close observation of the couple will eventually reveal which one is the dominant personality in the relationship.

And then some couples -- perhaps most -- are involved in an internal power-struggle that can get quiet passive-aggressive, depending on the couple. Passive-aggressiveness can often be mistaken for polite consideration, if the two people are clever enough. In this case, both people consider themselves "Captain" and are frustrated enough with the other to try to out-defer the other one . . . but it isn't a sharing of power as much as a quiet grasping for power in the absence of the other.

Any one of those three reasons could explain your perception of a lack of captaincy, or the idea that there are "co-captains". Unfortunately, since most couples have a much different public/private persona, it's difficult to determine unless you have intimate knowledge of what happens behind closed doors.

Now, I'm not saying it can't happen -- but it's not just the exception, it's the rare exception. But when someone has to decide whether or not the family is going to buy the new car, or needs to move to a bigger house, or make a dramatic career change, or otherwise impose an important but controversial decision on the family "boat", that person is the Captain whether they have been anointed that way or not. SOMEONE has to make the final decision and take ultimate responsibility for that decision. Soliciting options from your FO is one thing -- waiting for consensus to develop is another. Depriving them of the acknowledged authority to do so when they are making the decisions anyway erodes the stability of the marriage and completely screws with the sexual dynamic.

And I will also say that there is a big difference between running a marriage/family and running a business -- the two cannot be considered the same animal, when it comes to the power relationship. In a business the stakes are much lower, and the issues much less important and intimate than in a marriage. Unless the business partners are sleeping with each other, the sex alone adds an element that makes them incongruous comparisons. Add in the issues with children, and soon a business model is only crudely similar to the issues and pressures of running a marriage/family.